For many years, film cameras were the only option for capturing cinema quality motion pictures. The time requirements and costs related to shooting and processing motion picture images on film stock and then transferring those images into a digital form have created a need for motion picture cameras that capture high definition or cinema resolution imagery directly in a digital form. In the past few years, while several digital cinema cameras have emerged on the market these digital cinema cameras are complex designs that require the use of a multiple sensor prism block which, in turn, requires use of complex and expensive optics.
Many digital still cameras or dual-mode video and still camcorders are available in the market which use higher resolution single image sensors with color filter arrays, however, these digital still cameras and camcorders have slow readout architectures (e.g., a DSLR may only shoot four frames per second (fps) and can only achieve video rate preview at low resolution (e.g., 640×480) or standard definition (e.g., VGA 640×480 at 30 fps). In addition, the interpolation and color processing applied to the source raw data in these type of devices initially generates data sets that are larger than the source raw data which, in turn, requires the application of higher compression to fit the data sets into a target storage capacity. This typically results in a reduction in image quality compared to the original image or a coded version of the raw data.
Currently a few single sensor cameras have been developed for use in content creation for delivery at 2K, 4K and Stereo formats, however these cameras use sensor technology that is trending towards smaller sensors that make up for less light collection with more powerful processing to clean up the image noise. Further the disadvantage of the current digital 35 mm film format and any variations based on that design used by these type of cameras, including the current latest format of digital 65 mm are found in the inability to have large numbers of photosites that are also large enough to collect the amount of light needed to provide truly high quality images. This is because of the industry's adherence to the 35 mm format as well as the absence of innovative design aimed at increasing light gathering capabilities as well as providing a format and resolution never seen before. Lens availability is also a factor as 35 mm format has been an industry standard for many decades.
Numerous attempts have been made to develop cinema camera systems. Even though these innovations may be suitable for the specific purposes to which they address, however, they would not be as suitable for the purposes of the present invention.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,510,529 to Gottschalk discloses a camera for cinematography that uses the same lens assembly for a television camera and its monitor as is used with a viewfinder eyepiece assembly, so that the scene in the viewfinder eyepiece assembly is the same as that presented to the television camera and depicted on its monitor.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,663,687 to Neufeld teaches a digital cinema camera that includes a plurality of imagers and a plurality of shutters mounted radially on a frame. A beam splitter disposed at a center of the frame rotates to provide an input optical beam sequentially to the plurality of imagers by triggering the corresponding shutters. The electrical signals generated by the imagers are first stored in a removable magazine.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 9,245,314, 9,436,976, and U.S. Pat. Application No. 20170053385 to Jannard et al. describe a video camera comprising a housing, a memory device, image processing module and a compression module, an image sensor, wherein the video camera being configured to output the raw mosaiced image data at a resolution of at least 2k and at a frame rate of at least about 23 frames per second.
U.S. Pat. No. 9,565,419 to Presler discloses a digital camera system that includes an optical assembly to gather light from a desired scene, a modular imaging subsystem aligned with the optical assembly, and an image processing, recording and display subsystem, wherein the modular imaging sub-system comprising an imager including at least one array of pixels aligned with the optical assembly to produce a minimum of 10-bits per pixel of color data, and a frame grabber capturing raw image data output from the imager and outputting a serial data rate of at least 48 megabytes per second of non-interpolated color filtered pixel data.
U.S. Pat. Application No. 20140348489 to Stephens et al. describes a method for recording images comprising receiving and storing the optical effects selection as effects metadata; recording the raw image data using a sensor of the digital camera; applying the selected optical effect to the raw image data according to the optical effects parameter to create processed image data while preserving the recorded raw image data; and displaying the processed image data on a display of the digital camera.
U.S. Pat. Application No. 20160381338 to LIU et al. describes an image signal processing apparatus that includes a field programmable gate array (FPGA) device, which operates to receive one or more image data from an image sensor and then forward the received image data to an image signal processor to compress the received image data and save the compressed image data in a first storage medium.
It is apparent now that numerous innovations that are adapted to a cinema camera system that captures high resolution moving images have been developed in the prior art that are adequate for various purposes. Furthermore, even though these innovations may be suitable for the specific purposes to which they address, accordingly, they would not be suitable for the purposes of the present invention as heretofore described. Thus an ultra-high resolution cinema camera system that digitally captures images through the collection of more light and the high quality retention of that light to provide the camera with the highest amount of pure and clean image data, so as to create an ultra-high resolution digital format of the image is needed.